Sorry about the confusing title. This is because, yes, Taiwan is called ‘Chinese Taipei’ during international events, including the Olympics but other than that, NO, Taiwan is NOT Chinese Taipei and Taiwanese are not happy about our country being called ‘Chinese Taipei’. I thought there’s a need to explain because when I was talking with a British friend about Andy Murray’s first round defeat in Beijing, she referred to Murray’s opponent as ‘someone from a country I’ve never heard of’. I said he was a Taiwanese player and she looked puzzled, saying ‘Oh, sorry, but I didn’t hear or see “Taiwan” in the highlight’…

This name ‘Chinese Taipei’ was decided by KMT when Taiwan was still under martial law (when Chiang, Ching-kuo, son of Chiang, Kai-shek was in power). At that time, Taiwanese people had little say about our foreign policy. The IOC and the international community have offered quite a few chances of making ‘Taiwan’ the official name but the KMT government simply could not accept anything without any ‘Chineseness’. Under the current political climate, it would be hard to push China to accept anything without any Chineseness. Ma Ying-jeou, who was close to Chiang, Ching-kuo, has been elected President this year. He doesn’t have a problem accepting ‘Chinese Taipei’ – no surprise there, but a lot of Taiwanese people do. It got worse when China starting to force ‘China, Taipei’ onto Taiwan (With the Chinese government, if you give them an inch, they take a mile), which I’ll talk about in future. Here is an article on how ‘Chinese Taipei’ came about. http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/editorials/archives/2008/08/05/2003419446

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Taiwan, also known as Formosa, is NOT part of China. The majority of the population see themselves as Taiwanese, NOT Chinese. Taiwan is a democracy and therefore people there do not wish to be ruled by China, a dictatorship with poor human rights record and about 2,000 missiles aiming at Taiwan.